The Reload Podcast

In today’s interview we speak with Mike from the Songwriter’s Planner. Finding a manager, talking to your fans and creating music all at the same time can get quite overwhelming. The Songwriters Planner is a tool that’ll help you stay productive as an artist and help you reach your goals.

“Where it’s all about LIVE” is the slogan for Talentbanq and talking with Ray you begin to understand his love for live music. In today’s interview we go on to talk about the different levels of his company and how essentially he is helping independent artists get experience performing their own music and getting paid for it. If you’re interested to be a part of Talentbanq, it is invitation only, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reach out to them and apply to be a part of something special.

If you’re an artist who is exceptional and you want to play more live gigs whilst performing your own music, this episode is just for you.

Today’s interview is all about The Coffee Music Project, which is an international live music artist competition that showcases emerging musicians whilst raising valuable funds for the charity Project Waterfall. It takes place annually in London, New York and LA, with the winning artist getting their hands on £1000, a trip to one of the other cities where the competition is held and £1500 spending money. Sam and Rochelle are partners and helped create The Coffee Music Project and Daisy Chute was last year’s winner at the London competition. All three of them joined the podcast and it was nice to get insight from the admin level down to the artist level.

Today's episode is with Chris Carey, the founder of the influential music business conference known as FastForward. For those of you that don’t know much about FastForward, it is a conference aimed at connecting the next generation of music industry leaders. If you’re serious about working in the music industry you have to get yourself to one of these conferences, they are held all around the world so you have no excuse. In today’s interview, Chris talks about the influential speakers that attend his conferences as well as the importance of networking. He goes on to talk about how one of his conferences helped an aspiring artist find his future job and that it’s all about being proactive in your career.

In today’s interview, we were able to talk with Peter Harris, Founder of Resonate. Resonate is a streaming music service that is currently in beta, but is different from all the other streaming services out there. It is a co-operatively owned business that has a unique listening model. For any independent artist that is looking for a true and fair platform to share their music, Resonate will tick all your boxes. In today’s interview Peter talks about how transparent he wants the business to be and how he hopes to incorporate blockchain into his platform. Resonates’ listening model, known as ‘stream 2 own’ is really interesting and I hope you take the time to find out more about it.

Today’s interview is a little different, a few months ago I had an idea to create a new series on the podcast that follows the progress of one independent artist and their career. I want to check in every month and understand what it’s like being an independent artist in today’s environment. I want to understand their struggles and talk about topics that other singer-songwriters are going through. Fortunately, Sophii Negus - an artist that we’ve worked with in the past - agreed to be our guinea pig.

Episode 36 -   In today's interview we sit down with the lovely Marie Naffah. Marie is a singer-songwriter that we have worked with in the past on Reload Sessions. You can check out her performance over on the podcast show notes. A few years ago, Marie started a project called The Blindfold Project, where she took 6 blind musicians and created a documentary about being blind in the music industry. In the interview, we talk about what she learned from the project, how she was invited to speak at a Ted Talk and why there’s still a stigma with being blind in the music industry.

Episode 35 -  In today’s interview, we managed to sit down with the founder of She Said So, Andreea Magdalina. She Said So is a global network of women who work in the music industry, there are events held in London, San Francisco, Dublin and even in Johannesburg. When we came across her organisation it was inspiring to see how it has gone global and how it has brought women around the world closer together. Each event is different and they cover a variety of topics. We all know that open discussions lead to change and Andreea is providing a safe place for women, and also men, to talk and change the music industry from within.

Episode 34 - We spoke with SuRie, a London-based independent musician, about how she represented the UK at the Eurovision Song contest - performing for 186 million viewers across the world. We take a look at what SuRie the singer-songwriter was up to before the competition and what lies ahead for her after the notorious event.

Episode 33 - MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) makes it possible for an artist to deliver the highest quality of audio file to their listener. In short, audiences are able to hear exactly how an artist imagined a song, how they performed a song and how the song was recorded, making hi-res audio streaming a reality. We spoke with MQA CEO Mike Jbara to learn more.